All fishermen, and especially fly fishermen, spend considerable time replacing hooks, straightening leaders, changing lines, tying knots, rigging dropper hooks and untangling lined fish hooks. When conditions are ideal, these procedures are minor inconveniences. Conditions are rarely ideal, however, and these procedures are made more difficult by complications such as poor eyesight, poor finger dexterity, lack of experience, use of a small hook, or use of a line that has not been adequately straightened. Environmental factors such as wind, rain, dim light, and biting insects also complicate the execution of these seemingly simple procedures.
Various devices such as clippers, needle threaders, forceps, knot tyers, snaps, swivels, magnifying lenses, and leader straighteners can be used to facilitate fishing procedures. Typically, these devices are stored and carried in a tackle box, fishing vest, or pack. When all goes well, a fisherman is able to find, access, use, and return each device to its storage location before losing it or dropping it into the water. Executing these fishing procedures is tedious and time consuming, and as the number of employed devices increases, so does the likelihood of lost or misplaced equipment.
One approach that solves most of these complicating factors is to pre-rig tippets (short lines) with whichever fish hooks, jigs, flies, or dropper hooks the fisherman wishes to use during a fishing outing. Rigging hooks with tippets before a fishing outing enables the fisherman to execute the procedures of knot tying, dropper hook preparation, and straightening of tippets in the most favorable environment possible. Rigging tippets to hooks before, rather than during, a fishing outing also enables the fisherman to seek assistance from others, or to employ effective but cumbersome devices that facilitate knot tying and tippet straightening. In so doing, the fisherman is spared the need to have these devices on his body while fishing.
Hooks that are pre-rigged with tippets, leaders or snells, especially those that include dropper hooks, are difficult or cumbersome to carry without entanglement. A number of prior art inventions have attempted to address this problem, but each prior art has shortcomings that limit its widespread usefulness. For example, elastic loops and tension springs have been employed in cooperation with a rigid platform to hold and straighten short tippets. These prior art structures are only suitable for hooks with very short tippets, and because of their stiff platform, they are cumbersome to carry if longer than a few inches in length. Others have attempted to solve the problem of carrying longer tippets. These prior art structures usually employ wrapping, coiling, winding or folding of tippets. These inventions adequately store hooks with longer tippets, but they fail to keep the tippet straight. Storing longer tippets with these prior art devices creates loops, bends, kinks or coils in the tippet and is contra to providing for a straight tippet.
It is therefore apparent to those skilled in the art that an opportunity exists for providing a new and improved system based on structures that facilitate keeping lined fish hooks tangle free and ready for quick exchange to the main fishing line. No prior art teaches storing each lined fish hook in a separate sleeve where gravity acts on weights attached to the lined end of a fish hook to straighten, hold under tension, and protect the pre-rigged line of a fish hook so that it is free from entanglement. No prior art teaches a lightweight, streamlined carrier for lined fish hooks that can be secured to a fisherman's clothes or waders that conforms to and flexes with the fisherman's physical movements while keeping the lines of lined hooks substantially straight via uninterrupted tension. In addition, no prior art teaches the use of colors or other indicia on either the carrier or integrated with the lined hooks to enable easy locating and changing of the hooks for a fishermen having poor eyesight or limited finger dexterity.